


nightmares (they don't define us)

by golden_redhead



Series: Oumota Weekend 2019 [3]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Cigarettes, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oumota Weekend 2019, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Simulation AU, Smoking, Virtual Reality, but also a bit of bed-sharing and comfort, prompt: nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 00:24:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17652530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_redhead/pseuds/golden_redhead
Summary: Momota puts the cigarette in his mouth, its bitter taste already burning faintly in his throat, and inhales lightly while holding the flame of the lighter to the tip. Soon enough dry fumes reach deep inside to wrap around his lungs and the pungent smell carries to his nose, familiar and comforting, wisps of silver-grey smoke curling and dancing before his eyes. He leans against the balcony barrier, watching for a moment as the curls of smoke drift into the chilly morning air.He closes his eyes and tries to clear his head, throw out all those nagging thoughts that continue to haunt him.The tendrils of smoke continue to float above his head, coiling and shifting until they fade into the thin air. There’s a sense of solace that you can only really see in the early hours of the morning before the city wakes up again with its noises and foul smells.He’s on his third cigarette when he hears the shuffling from inside their little apartment.“...Momota-chan?”





	nightmares (they don't define us)

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: @asteroidtaker (Tumblr)
> 
> Part of the Oumota Weekend 2019 that I'm organizing. You can follow the event here: oumota-events.tumblr.com

Momota wakes up from the nightmares with a hydraulic press, a maniacally laughing bear and the rocket that takes him to the stars and then straight back to hell.

 

His eyes snap open with an accompaniment of a startled half-sob and half-whimper that tears itself out of his throat. For a long moment he just stares at the bare ceiling above his head, disoriented and in a daze, images and sounds from his dreams still bright and loud in his head.

 

In a frantic panic, he extends his arm to the side, worry and need of comfort swelling in his throat until his fingers brush against something familiar, something undeniably _human_ and he lets out a barely audible sigh of relief.

 

_ Ouma's here, _ he tries to reassure the heart hammering wildly in his chest.  _ Everything’s fine. _

 

Except, it really isn’t.

 

His breath is loud in his ears, labored, and he can tell that he’s on the verge of hyperventilating. 

 

He furiously blinks away the last traces of sleep and looks at Ouma’s much smaller form curled up next to him and was actually sleeping quite peacefully. He knows that Ouma has his own share of nightmares and all of them undoubtedly much worse than his own.

 

Momota got lucky. With the personality he got, with the execution, hell, even with how quickly he adjusted after the game ended and was released from the hospital, he had been deemed completely healthy within a few short weeks. Ouma? Not so much. He was never lucky, despite what his name would have suggested. Not with the personality they gave him, not with how lonely they made him out to be. Too smart for his own good, too paranoid to trust. And his death… so utterly gruesome and cruel that it quickly made its way to the top of all The Most Painful Danganronpa Deaths lists that Momota’s seen when he dared to check the Internet shortly after being released from the hospital.  

 

It’s actually one of not many nights where he sees him sleeping peacefully curled up in a tight ball after swallowing three sleeping pills on top of his usual medication.

 

Momota closes his eyes, but it quickly proves to be a mistake. 

 

The traces of the nightmare are still lingering beneath his eyelids, a sickly pale and scared face of a dying boy moments before the descent of a death trap, moments before all there is is a strangled final scream and a mosaic of blood splattered onto the floor.

Even as the memory of the scene starts to fade slowly, the sounds - the crack of bones, the splash of blood as it hits the floor and the last choked up gasp that gets drowned out by the whirring of the machinery - remain, as real as if he was standing right next to the press once more. 

 

_ The room feels suffocating. _

 

With one last shuddering breath Momota starts to untangle himself from the sheets,  careful not to wake Ouma up, knowing how little sleep he usually gets. Once he successfully manages to free his arms he throws away the blanket and with one last glance at Ouma’s sleeping face stands up on slightly wobbly legs. Blindly, he finds the wall and tries to navigate his way to the door in the near-complete darkness of the room. He snatches his coat from where he dropped it the night before and slips his arms into the long sleeves.

 

He opens the door to the balcony and steps out, feeling the cold gusts of early spring wind against the skin of his bare feet, goosebumps rising on his skin. It’s still pretty dark outside, the first touches of dawn painting the sky with rosy tint of blues and oranges, the fog still hanging low in the air and coiling around the nearby buildings. 

 

With a shaking hand Momota reaches to the small pocket of his coat and fishes a box of cigarettes out of it, humming approvingly when it turns out to be almost full. He pulls out one of the cancer sticks and pushes the box back into his pocket. He brings the cigarette up close to his face and reaches for the lighter that he always kept in a flower-pot on the windowsill, so it is there whenever he needs it. Momota puts it in his mouth, the bitter taste already burning faintly in his throat and inhales lightly while holding the flame of the lighter to the tip. Soon enough dry fumes reach deep inside to wrap around his lungs and the pungent smell carries to his nose, familiar and comforting, wisps of silver-grey smoke curling and dancing before his eyes. He leans against the balcony barrier, watching for a moment as the curls of smoke drift into the chilly morning air. 

 

He closes his eyes and tries to clear his head, throw out all those nagging thoughts that continue to haunt him.  


 

The tendrils of smoke continue to float above his head, coiling and shifting until they fade into the thin air. There’s a sense of solace that you can only really see in the early hours of the morning before the city wakes up again with its noises and foul smells.

 

He’s on his third cigarette when he hears the shuffling from inside their little apartment. 

 

“...Momota-chan?”

 

The voice sounds small, disoriented and still heavily laced with sleep. 

 

“Shit,” he mutters quietly, blindly reaching for the ashtray lying on the windowsill. 

 

By the time he slams the balcony door shut Ouma is already in the living room, crutches in hands, legs trembling and wobbling and bending as they struggle to support his weight.

 

Momota feels a painful strike of guilt piercing through his heart and hurries to his side. 

 

“Here, let me help you.”

 

Ouma flinches when Momota’s skin brushes against his, just like he always does, but doesn’t protest. He passively lets Momota wrap his arms around him and support his weight, too used to it to protest even though he hates this forced dependence. 

 

Slowly they half walk, half shuffle to the kitchen. Once there Momota carefully lowers Ouma onto one of the chairs, ignoring the smaller boy’s little huffs of annoyance and scrunched up in distaste face. 

 

Momota moves to rummage through their cupboard, cursing Ouma’s extensive tea collection under his nose. For him it’s all the same.

 

“You smell like shit,” Ouma’s nose wrinkles in disgust at the acrid smell clinging to his skin like a heavy layer of perfume and Momota lets out a short breathy laugh and flicks him on the forehead.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” he says distractedly and turns to the faucet to pour water into their small red kettle, filling it to the brim.

 

When he turns back Ouma’s eyes are closed, little fists clenched and resting against his thighs. His useless useless legs. Momota quietly busies himself with the task of making him tea, just the way Ouma likes it. 

 

A few minutes later he carefully puts a slender elegant cup before Ouma, one of the few things he has left of his grandmother.  The real one, not the warm tender lady he remembers from his memories. 

 

“You have another interview next week,” he starts slowly, carefully, his eyes never leaving Ouma’s frail figure.

 

“Uh-huh,” is his only response as he holds the cup in his hands delicately, blowing so it would cool off faster, the leaves of his favorite jasmine tea coloring the hot water with a rosy shades of gold. His expression is unreadable, only the slight tremor of his hands and barely-there furrowing of his eyebrows betraying his inner emotions. 

 

It’s always kind of surreal - watching Ouma bounce back to his in-game persona, all wide smiles and carefully shaped lies and sharp words that know precisely where to strike for it to hurt. He slides the mask on his face as if it’s a second skin, teasing and taunting and then falling apart in the warmth of Momota’s arms once the act is all over. It’s even worse if he actually has to interact with any other participants, almost as if it’s pulling out some bitter and darker side of him. Sometimes it’s hard to separate the two - the Ouma he knew in the killing game and the one he sees every day, struggling to carry the broken pieces of his past self. There’s a sense of dissociation to it, the difference between what is true and what is false grew so thin and fading to the point that he can’t even tell them apart.

 

He’s not much better, really. Momota from the game is so vastly different from who he was before applying to Danganronpa. And yet neither version of “him” feels real, making him feel like he’s floating somewhere in between, disconnected from both and unable to find the energy to care to find an answer. He rejects the Momota from before the game but he can’t be the person Danganronpa molded him into being either. So he clings to Ouma as if he’s his lifeline and out of some sick sense of guilt - for being so stubborn, for  _ killing him  _ \- burning inside him with an overwhelming intensity. 

 

He remembers Harukawa’s accusatory tone when he told them that he’s staying with Ouma instead of joining them as soon as the hospital staff deemed them ready to leave, her blood-red eyes gleaming with something like betrayal. She demanded that he tells her that he’s just joking and once he admitted that he was serious and that it doesn’t change anything between them she scowled and left without a word. Saihara’s reaction wasn’t quite as violent as hers but there was confusion, so much confusion as his eyes widened and he stammered a surprised “are you sure, Momota-kun?”. And Momota smiled, offering the widest smile he could muster, the muscle memory making it easier to make him look like the Momota that he knew and assured him that he knew what he was doing. Saihara didn’t seem very happy with this response but he didn’t pry, simply nodding in understanding and waved him goodbye. 

 

And so Momota stayed by Ouma’s side. Somehow they managed to find a fickle sense of comfort in each other and for now it is good enough. 

 

Momota presses his lips into a thin line and turns to the kitchen counter, pulling out ingredients and items that he needs to make them breakfast, muscle memory guiding him through the motions once more. 

 

“You don’t have to go, y’know,” he drawls while lining the eggs up on the counter with one hand and turning the stove on with the other. 

 

He doesn’t have to look behind to know that Ouma shrugs. 

 

“If I don’t go they’ll cut off our money,” he says emotionlessly. “And then we’ll have to go to work.”

 

He says ‘we’ but they both know that he’s nowhere in a state that would let him do that, making all the responsibility fall on Momota’s shoulders. 

 

Danganronpa representatives are willing to offer the participants money as long as they continue to perform the duties included in the contract such as participation in interviews, attending events and doing whatever they could in order to maintain the hype of their season.  

 

Momota is popular, especially now that the excitement related to the fifty-third season is still fresh, but not nearly as much as Ouma. The little liar quickly won the hearts of fans from all around the world. This meant more responsibilities, more interviews, more photoshoots, more events… more everything. 

 

With Ouma’s slow recovery they cannot afford to lose the money, even if there’s something dirty about taking it from Team Danganronpa’s hands.

 

Momota’s fingers twitch, hands instinctively curling into fists and rage coiling in his chest. It’s in moments like these that old Momota breaks through the surface with all his raw emotions and recklessness. But even then it feels muted, unable to reach that passion from before.

 

“Momota-chan cares too much,” mumbles Ouma, making Momota snap out of his thoughts. “Like the big dummy that he is.”

 

“I'm not,” grumbles Momota cracking the eggs into the frying pan. 

 

“Nishishi,” laughs Ouma and it’s the single most fake thing Momota has ever heard. He almost voices this thought out loud, words already forming at the tip of his tongue but he bites his lip before they have a chance to escape. 

 

“Remember that you have therapy later today. I’ll drive you.” He says instead.

 

He reaches for one of their sharpest knives and starts to cut the carrots, keeping an eye on the sizzling eggs the whole time. 

 

Ouma hums tunelessly.

 

“I’m not going.”

 

The knife slips out of Momota’s hand and grazes the skin, a scream that is more surprise than pain escapes his lips. The droplets of scarlet blood instantly form where the knife pierced the skin, dripping on the carrots and the marble surface of the kitchen counter. 

 

“FUCK!”

 

Ouma observes the whole ordeal with passive expression, fingers tapping against the smooth surface of the kitchen table. 

 

Momota rises his hand to suck the wound, the bitter taste of blood immediately flooding his tongue. A deep scowl twists his features and he levels his gaze with Ouma’s. The eggs are burning behind him, long forgotten.  

 

“Like hell you’re not.”

 

Ouma doesn’t even blink.

 

Momota groans. He doesn’t feel like fighting Ouma, not over this. 

 

“Why the hell not?”

 

“Momota-chan is a horrible hypocrite,” he mimics his mannerism from the game, smile creeping on his face. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “He makes me go to therapy but he stopped going to his.”

 

Momota frowns. “It’s different.”

 

Ouma’s face goes blank. Momota knows this look. This is a look he can’t win with. 

 

“If Momota-chan doesn’t go to therapy then I’m not going to mine even if he drives me,” he says. There’s a sense of finality in his words, despite the childish pout that adorns his face and crocodile tears that start to gather in the corners of his eyes, his favorite guilt-tripping weapon. “I’ll just sit there for an hour and not say a word and then we lose the money we could spend on something better and then we’ll have nothing to eat and the-”

 

“Fine,” spats Momota through gritted teeth. “Fine! I’ll go.”

 

Ouma smiles brilliantly.

 

Resigned, Momota turns to save the rest of their breakfast with a heavy sigh. 

 

He isn’t the person who he was in the game. He isn’t even the person who he was before the game. Neither is Ouma. He would like to say that they’re survivors but it doesn’t sound right, not yet.

 

He only hopes that they can get there one day. No matter how long it takes. 

**Author's Note:**

> Oof, and day three complete!
> 
> This time some angst because I simply can't help but feel the constant need to write post-game VR AUs. They just bring me so much joy, maybe it's some really weird coping mechanism. Speaking of coping mechanisms, though, I always liked this headcanon that after the game Kaito develops an addiction to smoking. Maybe because he smoked before the game or maybe just because it helps him to forget for a while, it doesn't really matter.  
> Anyways, in the next few days (hopefully even tomorrow?) I'm going to post my third and final fic for Oumota Weekend which is a Hogwarts AU. It's the longest oneshot I've written yet and I'm both excited and anxious about publishing it.
> 
> For now, though, please enjoy this little thing. I hope you liked it and as always please validate my dumb ass with some comments if you enjoyed reading it!


End file.
